


five late nights/one early morning

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Maveth, ah the joy of hiatus fic, mentioned Andrew/May, mentioned Daisy/Lincoln, slowburn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5549738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You don't look like you've been sleeping," he says, glancing from her to the bottle, and she smiles a little, shakes her head.</p>
<p>"No," she agrees. "No. Not the first time we've kept each other company like this, is it? You want to join me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	five late nights/one early morning

_1. flicker like late-night static_

Coulson doesn't expect that after Maveth, he won't be able to sleep, but it doesn't surprise him. He lies awake night after night. Behind his eyes is Ward's face. Rosalind's face. Things play out again and again until he gives up, gets up, stays up too late every night. The base is quiet around him. He feels a little like a ghost drifting through the halls.

Sometimes, in front of the tv, he can nod off for moments at a time. Late night talk show hosts murmur nothingness in phonemes that lull him into sleep without dreaming until he wakes, with a start, to infomercials advertising things he didn't know anyone would ever need.

He's half-drowsing, one night, drifting in the interstice between sleep and wakefulness, when Daisy comes in, stands in the doorway and looks at him and then the television and back at him.

"Can't sleep?" she asks quietly, and he blinks, nods, rubs his hand across his eyes. "Neither," she admits, "do you- do you mind if I join you?"

He doesn't mind. He doesn't even know what he's watching. Daisy settles herself at the other end of the couch, carefully not encroaching on his space, tucks her feet underneath her. 

"Can I change the channel?" she asks, and he nods again, passes her the remote. She flicks from channel to channel until she finds an old black-and-white movie, something atmospheric and quiet, and makes a contented noise. They watch in silence, and it feels soft, soft enough that by the time the credits scroll Coulson feels less like a ghost than he has in days and days.

"I'm going to make a cup of hot cocoa," Daisy says, muting the tv. "Would you like one?"

"Sure," Coulson agrees, listens to the quiet noises of her moving around the kitchen, filling up Jemma's electric kettle and turning it on, the chime of a spoon hitting the rim of a mug. Daisy comes back carrying two mugs, passes him one and curls back up on the couch, tucks her hands into her sleeves.

"Any particular 3am requests?" she asks him, unmuting and channel-surfing again, and he smiles slightly, shakes his head. The hot chocolate is sweet, a little chalky. It tastes like childhood snow fights, like winter evenings in the quietness of Wisconsin. It's soothing in the same way as the meaningless noise from the tv, gentle and undemanding. Daisy settles on another movie, and it takes Coulson longer than it should to realize it's one of the Lord of the Rings films. He can't remember which one, but it doesn't matter; they're not watching for the storyline. He finishes his cocoa, puts his mug down, yawns before he can catch himself. Daisy hunches a little more into her sweater, holds her mug with both hands.

"Are you cold?" he asks her, glancing over. "You can- you can put your feet in my lap, if you like." She looks up, surprised, then stretches out, settles her feet across his thighs. She  _is_ cold, and without really thinking about it, he wraps his hand over one bare foot, slides his thumb gently along the arch. Daisy sighs a little, closes her eyes, stays very still, but touching her, Coulson feels like maybe he could be human again. Not now, not tonight, but someday soon at least.

Onscreen, the elves go into the West, and he feels himself begin to drift into sleep, and under his palm, Daisy's ankle is smooth and warm and solid.

 

 

_2\. it burns but it's sweet  
_

He's sleeping better these days, but 'better' still leaves room for bad nights and nightmares, and tonight, it's everything, too much. He wakes with a start, wipes clammy sweat from his forehead, pads out into the kitchen to pour himself a drink of water. Daisy's sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of bourbon open in front of her, and from the set of her jaw, she's having a bad night too. He clears his throat, knowing she's already aware of him, and she looks up, drops her shoulders in a sigh.

"You don't look like you've been sleeping," he says, glancing from her to the bottle, and she smiles a little, shakes her head.

"No," she agrees. "No. Not the first time we've kept each other company like this, is it? You want to join me?"

He does, he realizes, he wants to feel the sweet burn of bourbon in the back of his throat, to let everything melt into a haze that's just that bit further away. He takes another glass from the pantry, sets it down on the table, lets her pour two large measures of liquor.

"Here's to late nights and poor choices," she murmurs, clinks her glass against his, sips slowly. They drink together in companionable silence, don't look at each other. Daisy pours again when they're finished, and then Coulson does, and the bottle's half-finished before either of them speak again.

"I dream about it too much," he says when he's four drinks in, feels finally like he can voice it, and Daisy nods.

"I dream about my mom," she tells him. "It's worse, now that I'm a leader. And now that I know about the outbreak. I can't help but feel-"

"Responsible," Coulson says, and Daisy nods again, throws back her bourbon.

"Responsible," she agrees. "For so many things. I should have killed Ward, back when I had the chance. Any time I had the chance. That's on me."

"What?" Coulson asks, almost angry. "No, it's on  _me_ , Daisy, I'm the one who-"

"Hey," she says, silences him with her hand on his wrist. "Let me share that load, okay?" Coulson has to think about that for a moment. Daisy shouldering his burden, Daisy telling him about her bad dreams, her fears, as if she knows it'll help him feel just a little better, it's overwhelming.

"Okay," he says in the end. "If you let me share yours."

"My dad killed Jiaying so I wouldn't have to," Daisy whispers. "I would have taken her apart by hand. He did it so I didn't have to."

"I killed Ward so nobody else would have to," Coulson tells her, and it's the first time he's said it out loud. "I- his chest, I-"

"With your hand," Daisy guesses, strokes her fingers a little further up his wrist. "So nobody else would die."

"I didn't want to," Coulson admits. "I didn't want to. But there was nobody else. I had to."

"I'm sorry," Daisy says, blinks back tears. "It's not on you, Coulson. You were saving so many lives."

"So were you," Coulson says. "So were you."

"It's a curse," Daisy says after a beat. "That's what Lincoln's always said. I cursed them all." She picks up the bottle, drinks straight from it and passes it to Coulson, and he hesitates before taking a pull.

"That's what he says?" he asks, and Daisy nods, breathes out, leans forward and rests her forehead on the table.

"Yeah," she murmurs, muffled, and Coulson puts down the empty bottle, strokes her hair very lightly. "Feels nice," she mutters, pillows her head on one arm, rests her hand on his knee. 

 

 

_3. just come fight me we'll lose together every time_

Coulson's picked back up most of the Director duties, and the paperwork backlog is big enough that he knows he'll have to spend a few nights working his way through it. His office, so late at night, feels too lonely, too barren, and he gathers up the folders, shifts to the leather couch where it's at least soft and comfortable. He's an hour in, settling into reading, when Daisy storms into the lounge, makes a frustrated noise.

"Sorry," she says, "sorry, you're working, I just-"

"Bad night?" he asks, looks up at her, but she doesn't look  _sad_ , just furious.

"I-" she says again, stutters to a halt, looks down and then back at him. "Can we just- would you play a round of Halo with me?"

He's terrible at Halo, it turns out, especially with the new prosthetic, but it's better than paperwork, and with Daisy's shoulder pressed in against his, it feels easy, almost fun. Daisy plays the first three rounds with the kind of directed anger that he knows she'd usually channel into a punching bag or sparring match, and then she sighs, takes a long breath, blows it all out and settles in closer against him.

"Something get under your skin?" he asks again, and she nods, doesn't look at him, fiddles with the controller.

"Some _one_ ," she says.

"Is this about the vaccine Jemma's working on?"

"The vaccine. The team. Our place in the world. It'd be really nice to learn the kind of compartmentalization you were always talking about, Phil." Coulson thinks, ruefully, that Daisy's giving him more credit than he deserves. He'd never managed to compartmentalize, not in the way that counts, even when he'd tried so hard to shut off everything emotional while talking to her.

"Is it worth it?" he asks. "What you have, I mean." It's a dangerous question, he thinks, one he's too invested in the answer to, and if someone - if  _Daisy_ \- had asked him the same question about Rosalind, he's not sure what he would have said. Daisy pauses, touches her fingertips to a rip in her jeans, tugs at a loose thread.

"I don't know," she admits in the end. "I hope so. What would you say?"

"I don't know," Coulson says honestly. "But you deserve someone on your side, even if it feels like the wrong one." Daisy chews at her lip, thinks about what he's said for a moment.

"You want to try again?" she asks eventually. "Maybe I'll even let you win this time."

" _Let_ me," Coulson says, mock-outraged, but they click 'play', and go into battle with each other again, and he doesn't want to hope, just wants to enjoy the warmth of Daisy leaning on him.

  

 

_4\. i've got a lot of woes (but baby they all fade away)_

Lincoln leaves for the Cocoon and doesn't come back, and Daisy doesn't say anything, doesn't say a word, but Coulson thinks he knows anyway. He finds her one night, curled up on the couch and looking morose, and he sits down next to her, touches her foot through the blanket she's got tucked around her.

"You want to play some video games?" he asks after a moment, and Daisy shakes her head.

"I'm not angry," she says. "Just-"

"Sad."

"Yeah," Daisy murmurs. "Yeah. I'm  _sad_. My heart's not broken or anything, but I'm sad, Coulson, I am. It could have been a good thing, in a different world."

"I'm sorry," Coulson tells her, and he is, he genuinely is. Daisy nods, eats a bite of what looks like ice cream, and Coulson reaches for the spoon, takes a bite of it himself.

"What is- that's  _terrible_."

"It's, like, low-fat sugar-free frozen yogurt. Macrobiotic. Jemma bought it. It's supposed to be  _healthy_ ," Daisy says mournfully.

"Oh, jeez, I... okay, stop eating that."

"It's fine. It's basically ice cream, right?"

It's not ice cream. Coulson takes the carton out of her hand and throws it away, goes to the freezer, pushes aside a sad-looking bag of string beans.

"Here," he says, hands her a full carton of Ben & Jerry's.

"Seriously? That's been there all along? You've been holding out on me," Daisy says, shoves a large spoonful into her mouth. "Oh god, Coulson, you're a livesaver." She makes more space for him on the couch, lifts the blanket up so he can slide underneath, and after a moment's pause, he wraps his arm around her shoulder, lets her settle in against his chest.

"You know you have to share it with me," he tells her. "Those are the rules."

"Oh, well, you know how great I am at following the rules," Daisy smirks, but passes him the spoon anyway, lets him dig out a big spoonful. "I have to warn you," she adds. "I plan to eat the whole thing."

"It's the only thing you can do in this situation," Coulson agrees gravely. Daisy heaves a sigh, rests her head back on his arm.

"He said I'd never make a relationship work if SHIELD was the most important thing in my life," she says, and Coulson doesn't really know what to say, because hasn't that been his life all along? SHIELD's always been his priority, and he's joked, in the past, about being married to his work, but- 

"It's not easy," he says in the end. "He's not wrong, in some ways. But there are people who'll work with it. Like May and Andrew."

"Andrew's better than most people," Daisy mutters, eats more ice cream. Coulson strokes her hair lightly.

"He is," he agrees. "But so are you." Daisy's silent, but she presses cold fingers to his thigh, nestles her cheek against the hollow of his shoulder.

 

 

_5. you're the bright center to the universe_

Daisy knocks at the door of his bunk one night, and when he opens it, she's in pajamas and carrying a DVD box set, a bowl of popcorn, some candy.

"Hi," she says, hands him the DVD. "I can't sleep. I thought, maybe, we could do that marathon we talked about a while back?" It's Star Wars, the original trilogy, and Coulson  _grins_ , because Daisy knows,  _knows_ , he's a nerd, and the idea of an all-night movie marathon is too, too good.

"Sure," he says. "Come on in, I'll get it set up." Daisy climbs easily into his bed, tucks her feet under the covers and fluffs a pillow behind her back, lays out the popcorn and opens a packet of M&Ms. Coulson puts in the first DVD, presses play, gets back into bed next to her, and the way she smiles, it's so bright it hurts to look at.

"I bet you know all the dialogue, right?" she asks. "I bet you had a crush on Leia. A  _mad_ crush."

"Who said anything about 'had'?" Coulson smirks. "Anyway, I could never settle between Leia and Han Solo." Daisy cracks up, throws popcorn at him, slides further down into bed.

"I can't believe you have a tv in your bunk," she grouses. "Unfair privileges. I'm the leader of Secret Warriors and  _I_ don't get a tv in my bunk."

"I requisitioned it," Coulson admits. "It felt weird, falling asleep every night downstairs in the common area. I never knew whether i was going to wake up with a moustache drawn on my face courtesy of Hunter."

"Well, can you requisition one for me?" Daisy asks, flashes him a cheeky grin, and he smirks again.

"You can watch it in here, if you so desperately need to watch tv in bed," he suggests, eats a handful of M&Ms, and Daisy drags her toes playfully up his calf.

"You'll get tired of me knocking on your door all the time, then," she says. "I'll be in your bed every night." Coulson knows she's joking, but the thought of it, the idea of Daisy in his bed like that, it takes his breath away.

"I'd never get tired of that," he says honestly, watches the film because he can't look at Daisy, and knows, anyway, that she's smiling.

They make it through A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and are halfway through Return of the Jedi when Daisy yawns three times in a minute, stretches out.

"I'm beat," she confesses, yawns again.

"Just sleep here," Coulson murmurs sleepily, fumbles around for the remote to turn the movie off. "It's fine. Save you walking back to your bunk."

"Yeah," Daisy mumbles. "Okay." She sets the popcorn bowl down, pulls the covers up to her chin, settles in. "G'night, Coulson," she whispers, reaches out and tucks her fingers against his chest. "Sleep well."

"Goodnight, Daisy," Coulson whispers back, closes his eyes, feels the warmth of Daisy's hand, the weight of her in the bed. It feels, tonight, like he might sleep well, with Daisy breathing steady and even and easy next to him.

 

 

_6\. this could be our every morning_

In the night, Daisy gravitates toward him until she's sleeping close, her arm flung outstretched over his chest and her knee pressed up against his thigh. Coulson wakes when Daisy shifts, gets out of bed, and he rolls over, cracks his eyes open against the half-light.

"Wha's time?" he mutters, and she reaches out, touches his cheek lightly.

"Six-ish. You can go back to sleep, I'll be back in a minute. Just going to the bathroom." He nods, closes his eyes, drifts back off, wakes again when she slips back under the covers. 

"You're cold," he complains, and she laughs, tucks her feet between his calves, shifts closer and wraps her arms around him.

"I  _am_ cold," she agrees. "You need better central heating in this base, it's freezing in winter. You're nice and warm though."

"Hmmm," Coulson grumbles, but he pulls the covers up around her, settles on his back so she can rest her head on his shoulder. "Not training with May this morning?" he remembers, and Daisy shakes her head, presses even closer to him. Her body's soft against his, and if he were more awake, perhaps he'd be worried, or uncomfortable, or compartmentalizing, but he's still half-asleep, and it just feels  _nice_.

"I'm taking the day off," Daisy whispers. "It's a Sunday. I just need a rest."

"Okay," he murmurs, kisses the top of her head before he can think better of it. "Sounds good." Daisy runs her fingers slowly down his chest, across his stomach, until she reaches the hem of his t-shirt, and then slides her fingers underneath, scrapes her nails lightly across his hipbone and back up his stomach. Coulson freezes. "Daisy..." he says, very carefully, and she pauses.

"Is this-" she says. "Is this something you don't want?"

"No," he says, "it's- of course I  _want_ it, but..."

"Because, I mean," Daisy continues, "we can be  _friends_ , Coulson, it's really nice, but I just thought-"

"You thought what?" he asks, and she stretches up to kiss him, tasting of mint toothpaste.

"I just thought, maybe, we could be more," she murmurs against his mouth, and yes, yes, they can be so much more, and Coulson's never felt so lucky.


End file.
